Filed To Story: Claimed by the Alpha I Hate Book Read Free
Rowena, because I most certainly didn’t, but I knew that if we started peeling off her flesh, what information she was giving us would surely come to an end.
There were still more questions flooding my mind, and I needed to see if she’d answer them first before beginning the real fun.
“The amulet you gave me, I want you to tell me about it.” I urged, squeezing
Nolan’s hand to warn him off of tearing into her quite yet.
“You were coming into your magic quickly thanks to Breyona’s wonderful, but very much dead, parents.” Rowena smirked, staring at the window that led into the observation room as though she knew Breyona was right there, pressed against the glass and hanging onto her every word. “I had to do something to slow you down.”
“Last question, witch.” Nolan growled, glowering down at her. “Fail to answer and I’ll happily let Daisy tear into you. I’m not sure what she was doing back there, but I’d love to see the end result.”
Rowena’s face paled, eyes flashing with genuine fear. My heart skipped a beat, the darkness in my veins bubbling excitedly, it’s sickening song picking up pace, whispering promises of power and murder, of blood and sweet, sweet vengeance.
“The spell your blood-witch is doing to enslave Daisy. How do we break it?” Nolan inquired in a voice of pure granite.
There was no way she’d actually tell us. I was more than sure I’d have to pry the truth from her brain after I cracked her skull like an egg, but when her smile turned reptilian, I realized how wrong I’d been.
“You want to know how to break it?” She giggled like a schoolgirl with a secret. Her voice took on a taunting, sing-song quality that made my nails elongate into claws. “There’s two ways but…you’re not going to like them.”
Nolan lurched forward, his jaw rigid and teeth bared. “How? Tell us, witch.”
Rowena continued to giggle, unfazed by the waves of pure murder radiating off of my mate. Her eyes flickered down to my hands, to the veins of inky darkness crawling beneath my skin.
“First option is Daisy here can give herself over to dark magic, and I mean fully give herself over. There wouldn’t be a force on this earth that had enough power to control her then. Or…there is one other option. A spell that requires that much sacrifice to create can only be broken by sacrifice of equal or greater measure.”
“We’d have to kill three of each species.”
Nolan’s gruff voice wasn’t what made the hairs along the back of my neck lift. It was the careful consideration in his eyes, like he was actually entertaining the idea of killing three werewolves, vampires, and witches.
“Mhm, that’s right.” Rowena hummed. She then leaned in, a wicked grin scoring her face, wrinkling the decaying flesh surrounding her eye. “…but it’s not your only option. There’s another sacrifice that can be made, one that surpasses killing three of each supernatural species.
There’s a thin sheen of sweat clinging to my skin, thickening with each second that passes. A knot builds in my stomach, and for a moment, I feel sick. Something isn’t right about this. Rowena is giddy, almost eager as she gives Nolan the answers we’ve all been searching for.
Shadows thicken along the walls, gathering in the corners as they writhed and whispered. Tiny voices overlapped one another by the hundreds. All of them were saying the same word, chanting it like a warning, but my mind was too much of a mess to pick the voices apart.
“What is it?” Nolan asks, seemingly unaware that he’s leaning in, something dangerously close to hope burning in his eyes.
“If someone who loved Daisy, loved her purely with every piece of their being, were to give their life for hers, the spell would be broken. It has to be pure love, though. No conditions or stipulations of any kind. It can be a friend…a family member…or even…” 1
I sucked in a sharp breath, my hold on Nolan’s hand turning to stone as I jerked my arm and tore him away from her.
“No.” The word slid past my lips as a snarl. “You’re lying.”
I could hear the shadows chanting now, their razor-blade voices cutting into my ear drums, forcing a scream to curl in my throat.
‘Mate…’ ‘…mate’ ‘Mate…’ They whispered frantically.
“That’s right, Daisy.” Rowena’s smirk turned triumphant. “…a mate.”
‘Let’s take a minute. I need a breather before I tear her heart out.’ I hissed over mind-link.
The darkness in my veins was crooning, ‘kill her, kill her, kill her.’ The possibility that she’d open her mouth again and say something that eroded the last shred of my willpower was terrifying enough to make me want to run.
Still holding Nolan’s hand, I pulled him away from Rowena. The traitor was reclined in her seat, lazy smile on her face. She could act like being here was her choice, like this was some five-star resort, but
I had a feeling she’d quickly change her mind once Nolan began drawing blood.
The mere thought of hearing her screams had my hands shaking, twitching with the urge to let my magic take control.
There was clear reluctance on Nolan’s end, but he relented and let me lead him into the observation room. As Rowena’s cell door swung shut, I closed in on my mate. The others in the room faded into the background, the prickling sensation that was their eyes smothered by fear.
I fumbled to grab both of his hands, capturing them with my own so that he had no choice but to stop and listen to what I was saying. There was no time for his stubbornness, not when his life was so clearly on the line.
‘You better wipe that look off of your face, and don’t act like I don’t know what it means.’ I snarled, sucking in deep breaths to calm my frantic heart. ‘You’re not sacrificing yourself. It’s not an option, you hear me? I will lock you in one of these cells. if it means keeping you safe, and I’m willing to bet anything that Zeke and the others will help me.’
‘What kind of Alpha would I be if I didn’t do this?’ Nolan’s voice was lower than normal, thickened by grief and guilt.
More than anything, I wanted to wash it away. I wanted to be the balm that soothed his soul and the rock that the waves crashed against, but some things couldn’t be fixed. I knew that firsthand, because the hole in my chest where my brother once was would never close-never heal.
I hated that he had to throw my earlier words back in my face. He knew I couldn’t argue against it, not when I was so willing to do the same thing. It was pure selfishness that kept me from backing him up, but as hard as I tried, I couldn’t seem to change my own mind.
‘Nolan, I’m not living a life without you in it.
I won’t do it. I don’t care if it makes me selfish. Becoming a Luna was never something I wanted, not until I met you and realized what you are to me. If I lose you, I lose my reason for everything.’
Flecks of shimmering gold filled his eyes, warming my cold and clammy skin.
‘You’d take care of this pack, I know it. You’d be alive and breathing. That’s all I want.’ He finished; his voice filled with such absolution that a shard of panic pierced my chest.
‘No, no I wouldn’t.’ I closed my eyes, facing the ugly truth behind my many flaws. There was such rage boiling beneath the surface, staining my soul, and turning it black, feeding the darkness that poisoned my blood. When I opened them, I let every bit of that anger show, praying it would be enough to deter him. ‘If I lost you, I’d lose myself. The darkness would take over, and I’d let it. Nolan, I’d kill every last witch that walked this earth. I’d kill every single person that led to me losing you.’
Surprise and dread flooded the mate-bond in chords of steel and silk, rippling across Nolan’s rugged face until his guilt and grief morphed into sheer determination. The sea that was his thoughts began to churn, kicking up into a hurricane that caused the waves to funnel and whirlpool.
‘Then there has to be another way. Rowena was far too enthusiastic telling us how to break the spell.
She wants us to focus on what she said, rather than what she didn’t.’
He said, eyes darting over to the far wall, through the window that gave us a glimpse of Rowena in her cell.
An idea popped into my head; one I’d thought of weeks ago but hadn’t given much thought to. It was nearly impossible, but it beat losing Nolan or someone else I loved. The smallest glimmer of hope filled my body, smoothing over the ragged edges of the hole in my chest. I couldn’t embrace the emotion the way I wanted to. There was no telling if this would work.
‘We could kill the blood witch…’ I said after several seconds of silence. ‘She’s the one casting the spell.
She’s the one trying to control me. If we kill her, then the spell is broken and the only person capable of controlling me is gone.’
Nolan’s eyebrows slid closer together, his face pinched in a grimace. ‘It would work, but we have no idea where the blood witch is.
They could be in any town, and we’d never know. Even if you found a way to break through the illusion magic Rowena was talking about, we don’t have the time to go through every single human town within a two-hundred-mile radius.’ 1
He was right, but there was another option- a faster and much more satisfying one.
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
Dayson was the alpha of the largest pack in North America. Powerful figures from other packs sought to offer gorgeous girls as potential mates for Dayson. He steadfastly rejected these advances, he was not a pawn to be manipulated. But eventually there came a mysterious girl he could hardly say No. Who was she?